


Albion

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Category: Den lille Havfrue | The Little Mermaid - Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: Coming of Age, Everything that Comes with the Canon, Genderswap, M/M, merman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 07:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14444298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: "And as men are drawn into the embrace of merwomen, so too are they drawn into the embrace of mermen."





	Albion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kurage_hime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurage_hime/gifts).



> Glan = of the shore

The youngest in the family was different. He loved his sisters mightily, but he always knew that he was one who moved through life alone. He took to the currents alone, and he swam into the depths, deeper than anyone dared to go. There were things to be feared in the deep, even for those whose world it was. 

And so Albion drifted and swam all the farther, giving himself personal challenges whenever he could. Farther and faster. Deeper and wider each day. For his true home was in the sea, and not among those who lived within it.

On the day that he broached the surface for the first time, he was but six years old and it was not an intention of his. But as he loved the sea itself with all of his heart, coming to realize that he could also breathe air above was his own cherished secret that he kept fast and safe. Though perhaps his sisters knew they could as well, he did not tell them that he had discovered this, for it was his.

For years, Albion watched the boats, even diving around, between and under them, and he knew that his games with the surf were becoming more risky for his well-being. But he spent just as long deep, deep, deep in his home, among the caves and in the dark, where he knew that he had come from.

This is how he knew of both the magic of the sea and also of its surf, the spray that touched the air the surface-dwellers breathed.

He knew that in each swallow of air or water there was magic he could carry with him.

Less and less did he speak to his sisters, for they were not concerned with magic and they did not dream of those things that it could give to them.

Albion had seen the men.

And he saw that they stood above the sea, in their boats and on two spindly bits that were not fins at all. He discovered that they were named legs when a man named Glan fell overboard following a heavy shove and the worst crack that Albion had ever heard. For he was not accustomed to the sounds above ground. They shocked him and reverberated into his very core.

He caught the injured man, whom they called Prince, and lugged him, swimming, out of harm’s way, even as his compatriots screamed his name, having lost sight of him in the fog and sea foam. And so it was Albion, strong as he was, who gently placed Glan at the shore’s edge, where he was at home.

It was then that Albion disappeared, back into the waves. Yet he was getting so lost, so lost, and he was wondering then how there were corners of the sea that he did not know. 

The sea answered him, as it sometimes did when he needed to be in safety. It was because the men, especially Glan, had made him lovesick and he was losing his way.

He would pay, the sea knew, for a way home, whether it was back to land or to the kingdom where his sisters lived. And word would be sent to them, oh yes, but if Albion wished it, he could wash ashore where he willed.

He could not--would not--be allowed to speak of the kingdom which he had come from. He would not be allowed to speak at all. And he would be borne to the castle of Glan, for they knew of it.

The magic could carry him that far.

Glan knew, upon seeing him, when he was brought to the castle gate, exactly who he had been. And as men are drawn into the embrace of merwomen, so too are they drawn into the embrace of mermen. 

Albion led him away, though he stood on legs that did not wish to do his bidding, and pained him always. The magic was enough to bring them both easily to a glade behind the castle. And there they lay on the forest floor as the sun glistened golden overhead, and Glan knew that he had found home in a stranger’s arms.

The glade became theirs, and just as Albion’s love was a secret from his family that would hold for a time, it was a secret very close to the bosom of the Prince as well.

Every moment with the Prince was bliss and pleasure, but Albion’s body was wracked with pain as well. This he bore silently and without regret, exerting himself in new ways to be a man on two legs as he had wished.

The spell itself is well-known, shrouding Albion in silence and in physical misery that began in his feet but permeated so much of him. Yet, the touch of his Prince could transport him in some ways from the feeling of the pain and the only thing that was forbidden him in these times as they, young and softly drawn together, was to say that he was also a Prince, of a Kingdom beneath the waves.

And surely, he thought, it might be easier were he a woman, for they would not have to hide as they did now.

Albion had hidden so much of himself over the years, knowing it would be necessary, craving his privacy, that this alone did not hurt him, but the urge to shout from the rooftops that his was a love unlike any he had ever felt before...that was far harder for him to endure.

So too he wondered the Prince’s true feelings, especially after each visit from the foreign courts, which caused Glan to be much more distant.

Albion wished to ask what was coming, for he knew that it was something, but he only kissed his Prince and thought to himself, _See me_ and _Stay by my side. Forevermore._ This was his wish, despite any physical pain he might endure as his spirit quaked inside of the body he knew no longer fit it.

The harder he wished it the more he knew that it would never be, and he heard the whisper of the sea reaching his ears.

_He will be wed, and then what of you?_

He had spent his years growing and knowing the ways of the sea folk of Glan’s court, and he wished only to remain. But he knew that he had been given the time to indulge, and to know himself, and the hour was at hand.

News of the wedding spread that very morning and Glan came to him one last time. “You understand,” Glan said. “I….feel….” And he reached for Albion’s hand once more and pressed close. Shaking like a leaf he said, “There is love, and then there are honor and duty,” and Albion rocked back on his painful heels he had not once indicated to his love.

Was there not honor in loving him? In being Glan’s own self?

But Albion did understand, remembering with bitterness all of the times he was not himself at home.

He wished he could explain all of these things, even in halting tones, to his love, or dance them upon the beach as he had seen maidens do. But instead he would only be Albion, the quiet lover who had always helped Glan make enough noise for two.

Albion was glad of his quiet, and how he had never once burdened his Prince with the idea of his pain.

He would remember that he was irresistible to his love, and his love to him, and that it had been a blissful time, though quiet and in secret, and exactly what he had wished to know of humans and their lovemaking.

And now he knew one thing more, that he would never harm a hair on his lover’s head, and he would scream it into the heavens, and curse the sea for asking it of him in a bargain he had never meant to keep.

Damned, he was, and then, slowly, as the clock struck midnight on his beautiful Prince’s wedding night he prepared to fade, having achieved love won and lost despite all odds being stacked against this ever happening.

And forlorn though he could have been, there was also a vindication, if not happiness, in his fears. For a mortal man had loved him, shown him pieces of himself he had forever needed to see.

And so Albion heard the bells ring, and he walked back into the sea, but not to return, only to become the foam and the mist and the space between.

For he understood it all.


End file.
